Free The Art Whisperer (An Alix London Mystery) by Aaron Elkins, Charlotte Elkins Page A

can see that you didn’t. I hope you had all your data backed up in the cloud somewhere,” he said, obviously doubting it.
    “Actually, I do.” Chris had insisted on teaching her how to set that up on SkyDrive and once done, it took care of itself. Now all she would have to do was get a lesson on how to retrieve it.
    “That’s good. Okay, your answers to Officer Campbell’s questions were very clear. I just have a couple more. You’ve said he was a male.”
    “Yes.”
    “But you couldn’t see his face, and he wasn’t especially big or strong, and he never said anything, so you never heard his voice. So how do you know it wasn’t a woman?”
    “It wasn’t,” she said with certainty. “Women and men have different ways of moving, of gesturing. You can’t always tell, but when you can, you can, even if you can’t explain exactly how. And this was a man.” The good old connoisseur’s eye, in other words.
    Cruz seemed to accept this. “More coffee?” At her nod, he topped off both their cups. “So, listen, how do you think he got inside? No signs of a forced entry. Did you possibly leave those doors unlocked?”
    “It’s possible, but I really don’t think so. But remember, during the day, there’d be staff coming in and out. Someone might have accidentally left them unlocked.”
    “Where do you keep your room key when you’re out?”
    “In my bag. It’s back in the other bungalow right now.”
    “But in general, does it stay with you all day?”
    “You think someone got the key out of my bag to get in?”
    “The thought crossed my mind, yes. So, does it stay with you all day?”
    “Pretty much. I mean, I keep it in my desk at the Brethwaite. If I’m just going to be gone a few minutes, I do leave it there.”
    “Ah.”
    “Oh, wait a minute, detective, it’s the only place I ever leave it. And the museum isn’t open to the public right now. The only people who get in are the people who are supposed to be there. Surely you’re not suggesting that one of the Brethwaite staff—”
    “Well, I’m not discounting it. That’s my best guess yet as to how this guy’s been getting into these hotel rooms. He gets hold of a guest’s key card somehow, runs to their hotel, unlocks the door, and uses something—a match, a paper clip—to leave it propped open a crack. Then he runs back—if it’s in Palm Springs, it can’t be more than a few minutes away, can it?—and puts the card back wherever he found it, and returns to the hotel later, at his leisure, but while the guest’s out.”
    Doubtfully, she shook her head. “I don’t know, I think you’re on the wrong track there. I just don’t see one of the staff sneaking into my desk to steal my key so they can sneak into my room that night and steal my laptop. I just don’t see it.”
    “Well . . .”
    “Besides, if it’s the Phantom Burglar we’re talking about, he’s obviously been able to get in pretty much anywhere he wants. Why assume it has to be someone who works at the museum? Anyway, maybe he gets into the rooms some other way. Maybe they’re—I don’t know, inside jobs or something.”
    “Well, and so they may be,” he said agreeably. “As I said, it’s only a hypothesis. The entire notion of a Phantom Burglar—a single person behind all these thefts—is no more than a hypothesis. Could well be wrong. Hello, Dennis, lad, what have you got there?”
    Officer Campbell had returned, beaming and bearing aloft what Alix at first took for a plastic shower cap in a see-through plastic bag.
    “Oho, what do we have here?” Cruz asked again. Everything seemed to be a game to him. “Bring it here, Denny.”
    “It’s a, what do you call it, a shoe cover, isn’t it?” Alix said as Campbell placed the bag on the table. “The kind of thing they wear in operating rooms to keep them germ-free.”
    “In this case,” Cruz said, “I think the more apt comparison would be with our crime scene investigators, who are almost